March 19, 2009

Forest City selling three NYC movie theaters, Queens Place mall

Which NYC properties did the parent company of Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner put on the auction block to raise much-needed cash?

A reader put me out of my misery by forwarding the actual coverage in the newsletter Real Estate Alert:

Eastdil is also marketing the retail properties, which are in three outer boroughs of New York. The largest is Queens Place, in the Elmhurst section of Queens. The 222,000-sf vertical power center, built in 2001, is filled by big-box stores, including Target, Best Buy and shoe retailer DSW.

Also being offered is The Heights on Court Street in Brooklyn (102,000 sf). The property is occupied by a United Artists movie theater and a Barnes & Noble book store. United Artists also leases the other two retail properties up for grabs: the 84,000-sf Steinway Street Theaters in the Astoria section of Queens and the 70,000-sf Forest Avenue Cinemas on Staten Island.

NoLandGrab: It's nice to know that real estate industry folks are reading Norman Oder's blog. Certainly Bruce Ratner would prefer that was not the case.

For you non-industry folks, "vertical power center" is a euphemism for "mall," which is apparently a four-letter word in the real estate world. Our favorite is still "regional lifestyle center," which as far as we can tell is a large outdoor mall.